I, on the other hand, have a different idea. I draw inspiration from this story:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/carwash.asp

I want to get a murder of crows to find me money. I would set up a vending machine for the crows. They would put the money in and food/nuts would come out. It's my next business plan. (I'm mostly jesting of course).

Omg, those starlings are incredible. Thanks for that. I love watching animal behavior.

I have a small container of water on my deck for the birds. Sometimes I put out bits of stale bread. The crows fly in (they are big!) and pick up the bread and walk over to the water and dunk, dunk, swish, dunk. Then they eat it. My crows like gravy.

I swear they can tell humans apart. I swear they do fly-bys at our windows to see who is home (I seem to be less threatening to them than my husband) and how close we are to the back door which is near the bread they want to land to get. Sometimes when I walk out the front of the house, one calls to another and I see them land on the back porch. The blue jays do this too.

I've often said that if I was going to have a pet, I want it to be a crow. They are fascinating to me. Come to think of it I'm aware of several books about crows but have yet to read one. I need to put that on my to do list.

By the way, you mention that Jay's have similar behaviors. Good eye. They are both in the Corvid family:

I used to listen to public radio more but it's changed in the last 5 or 10 years. There's more sports and Hollywood coverage, less international coverage, more cutesy quips and laughing. Not that there's anything wrong with any of this, but it doesn't reflect my interests as much as it used to. Maybe I've changed too.

Shaun, just out of curiosity, is that Richard Dawkins the atheist?I love crows too--if you're on FB, there's a FB page for corvid news. And other birds--have any of you seen the David Attenborough program on Bower Birds ("Flying Casanovas")? It makes a very strong case not just for tool-using, but for art-making among the birds. Excellent.